Thursday, April 9, 2015

Since one of the main problems our Lebanese society is
facing nowadays is slow internet connection, I therefore have no choice but to
complete my assignment through blogger.

I was asked to come up with an initiative concerning one
major societal problem in Lebanon, one that citizen engagement could help
solve. I have chosen the elections problem; the Lebanese population has been deprived
from their basic right of voting for their representatives in the parliament
since 2013. Elections were supposed to take place that year and the parliament
renewed for itself twice, stating that the next elections will be held in 2017,
which is two years from now. So far, few have taken action against this
violation of human rights. Approximately 40 people went to the streets only,
which is very few in order to drive positive change. The initiative that could
take place could start by a coalition of civil society and NGOs, who will try
to make the voices of the citizens be heard by putting pressure on governments
through peaceful protests, sit-ins, petitions, since there is no formal court
where the human rights infringers could be brought into account. Perhaps it
would be a positive incentive and motivation for all frustrated citizens to
join forces with civil society and go the streets to demand that their rights
be restored.

The key planners would be members of NGOs and civil society,
intellectuals from all fields of work, going from social work to engineering to
law, because unity is strength; by joining hands to overcome this unconstitutional
decision, through constructive dialogue and experience sharing, they will be
able to raise awareness in people over their rights as citizens and members of
the society in an all-encompassing way, tackling all aspects of the matter,
from administration to logistics. Target audience are all people who have the
right to vote, and therefore are immediately affected by the problem. Recruitment
will be for everyone who is not politically affiliated, and the reason is that
politically affiliated people are in favor of the extension to their leaders in
the parliament. Any person that complies with these two criterion, and who is
dedicated to serving the public good are welcome to join, whether employed or
unemployed, rich or poor, so that everyone can feel involved because it affects
all of us. The initiative could partner with media, social media users, and international
organizations whose duties are to watch over human rights such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch.

Techniques and tools to be used in the initiative will be a combination
of social media, which are viral platforms, fast and affordable that could
spread our mission and actions and mobilize people with its effectiveness.
Examples are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, increasingly popular among the
Lebanese population of all ages. Other conventional tools could be newspapers,
common among people who cannot afford internet or smartphones, or even TVs and
radios, because they are able to deliver the message even to the most
vulnerable. The combination of these tools would be able to spread awareness to
all classes of society, and perhaps spark in them the will to change and
overcome the unconstitutional decisions, something they might have thought
about but never occurred to them that action could be taken in this corrupt
country. The initiative will consist of using these platforms and tools to send
parts of the constitution that the offenders broke, or even call for massive
peaceful protests or sit-ins to block the roads to the parliament.

The barriers our initiative could face are perhaps
corruption of the leaders who could bribe people to not manifest, or even the
use of force by the police facing the protesters. By having people from all
fields, the initiative would be immunized on the legal aspect, with lawyers
telling us how we can protest and which rules are present in order not to break
them, or engineers could plan where to sit in order to create the most pressure
(car traffic and so on). Opportunities could be negotiating with some
politicians that are not convinced by the extension and use their expertise to
overrule the decisions already made.

The only metric or indicator that could measure the success of
our initiative is the organization of elections before 2017, translated by an
appeal to the decision already made and overruling it. It is extremely crucial
because it’s the only way to measure the effectiveness of the initiative
because the demand is one; return the power to the people, by the people,
through elections, to bring into account the offenders of the constitution that
shapes the lives of all Lebanese. Elections are a fundamental right of each and
every citizen, which should not be, in any way, taken away from them.